go_team

I heard John McCain is a Scientologist. Is it true? (Pass it on.)

I'm reading The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, and it might be my favorite piece of "when in doubt, don't eat the animal product" propaganda to date (besides cookbooks, anyway). But I just got to the chapter on eating out, and I'm a little worried, because of this passage:

That ranted, I am hoping very much that Singer and Mason will conclude that if you really want to eat out ethically, you should either patronize only restaurants that proudly advertise the origin of their ingredients, or forget it and eat only what you cook at home from ingredients whose sources you know and love (and good luck with that; this book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and of course Marion Nestle's fantastic What To Eat are good places to start). I'm keeping my fingers crossed, because the book has been very smart and in touch with reality so far, and I'm more than halfway through. And now I will return to my reading.

Update, 11:18 PM --- Nope, but then again the chapter turned out to be a more general thing about the food industry and three businesses in particular. I thought they went a little too easy on Whole Foods, too, but oh well. Maybe they'll give the "either choose your restaurant with care or stay home" advice in the conclusion of the book.

SB 1000, which would create same-sex civil unions in Oregon, passed the state senate this morning. Now the question is: will its "insert 'and civil union' after all references to marriage in the state Constitution, and while you're at it, substitute 'spouse' or 'partner' for all references to 'husband' or 'wife'" form survive the House, much less pass?

Ok, going to work now.

So last year a few thousand same-sex couples got married in Portland, and a few months later Oregon passed a same-sex marriage ban, Measure 36, in response. Then last month the state Supreme Court decided to punt on the bigotry amendment's constitutionality or lack thereof and overturned all those marriages basically on the grounds that queers were already and still are second-class citizens even without Measure 36. At the same time that decision was being handed down, a civil unions bill got introduced that basically says "every time the law says 'marriage', substitute 'marriage or civil union'." I'm not 100% sure, but I somehow suspect that these civil unions will be queers only, no opposite-sex couples allowed. But whatever, it's a starting place for continued legal battles of doom. Meanwhile, the anti-same-sex marriage crowd has introduced a "reciprocal beneficiaries" bill, like a weaker version of what Hawaii's got, which is good not just for same-sex couples but also for say, siblings or roommates or grandparents and grandchildren, or basically any two people who want to designate each other with certain rights and privileges more limited than those granted by marriage. The idea is to make civil unions look too extreme or something, and I'm supposed to be up in arms about it, according to the latest action alert email . But really, I want both of these bills to pass. Duh. Anything that helps raise awareness of the fact that legal marriage is just a standardized contract, but that really there's a lot of different ways for relationships to be structured, legally or otherwise, is awesome by me. And reciprocal beneficiary stuff, while basically just a standardized version of stuff like inheritance and power of attorney that can already be arranged if you're motivated enough to get a lawyer to set up the contracts, is more inclusive than same-sex-only civil unions. Grawr. I know that if reciprocal benificiary stuff gets passed first, then wankers are going to argue that civil unions aren't necessary, just like the Measure 36 campaign ran ads claiming queers could get all the rights and privileges of marriage through contract law, but no. What we need to do is holler, loud and clear, that both of these laws are a good idea, they should both pass, and p.s. if civil unions really are the same as legal marriage then frickin' well make them open to opposite-sex couples and make legal marriage obsolete while you're at it. Duh. (That last should probably be my secret agenda, huh? People really seem to like the m-word. Oh well. Oops!)

It's our political action fund! A guy from the Sierra Club just came by and we gave him $8 in quarters and Sacajawea dollars. Plus Allison and I got to send postcards to Bush and OR senator Smith saying "National parks are good, mmkay? Leave 'em be!" Now I am hungry, which means it's time for leftovers! Mmmm, cream of three mushrooms soup courtesy of the Glenwood's dinners to go! Woo!

Hey kids! If any of you reading this live in the United States and haven't yet emailed your Senators to tell them to oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment, it would make me really happy if you did so. Especially if you live in Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Alaska, Nebraska, Arkansas, North Dakota, or South Dakota. Tell your families and friends! I could rant and rant at great length ( but )

This just in: mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486, is a drug that induces abortion if administered early in a pregnancy. Emergency contraception, such as Plan B or just high doses of regular birth control pills, prevents ovulation and fertilization, or sometimes implantation of a fertilized egg ^( 1 )

I suspect that writers on both sides of the issue fuck this up because "morning after pill" is less harsh-sounding than "abortion pill" to the pro-choice side, and on the anti-abortion side the distinction is less important because emergency contraception can arguably be said to induce an abortion. I don't care. I just want people to get their damn facts right.

Oh, and here's a link to the article that got me ranting first thing this morning. I can't finish reading it, let alone trust what I've read in it, because of this stupid factual error. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a letter to the editor to compose.

If y'all haven't read pants_of_doom's National Coming Out Week wish list, go do so now. It's good stuff. On a similar note, here's a link to the discussion that ensued when I posted grumbling about President Bush's announcement that federal government lawyers are working to legally define marriage as a union between a man and a woman (because apparently it's not enough that states keep passing laws that say the same thing, and the Defense of Marriage Act says it's okay for states to disregard each other's laws concerning same-sex marriage --- this has to be a federal issue, too... but I digress). It was a good discussion, I thought, but it made clear to me that a lot of people don't know very much about the legal issues surrounding marriage and domestic partnership and such. Since this is kind of a hot-button issue for me, I'm full of fun facts about it, and I figured hey, why not share? To start off, here's something I wrote to someone who thought I was common-law married because Peter and I are registered as domestic partners with his grad student union, so I can get cheaper health insurance.

By the way, October 11 is National Coming Out Day, and this year the Human Rights Campaign is encouraging people to come out in favor of same-sex civil marriage rights (as distinct from religious marriage/commitment ceremonies, which are available to everyone, though not from all religious denominations, and either way don't confer legal benefits). I think this is a good idea, although it sort of misses the point that marriage as an institution has other problems besides the fact that it discriminates against same-sex couples. I'll post about that later, but for now this post is long enough.

Update, 18:36: Ok, it was long enough, but I want to remind myself that I also want to write about the Bush Administration's Marriage Protection Week bullshit (timed to coincide with National Coming Out Week, no less), and maybe post links to resources like the Alternatives to Marriage Project (probably my primary source of information on this issue), so anybody interested in learning more can do so. Am I forgetting anything important? If so, please leave a comment. coldtortuga, I remember you were curious about my personal views on marriage; these posts should help make them clearer but I could write something to address that point in particular...

Ok, so apparently PBS has a new series out about the history of the idea of race in the United States, and in particular the evolution of the idea that there are actual biological differences between races, and how really race is a social construct. It's called Race: The Power of an Illusion, and that link goes to the PBS pages about the program, which I haven't really explored yet.

Anyway, I've been reading some reviews of the series, and it's made me curious about some stuff. AlterNet ran a really positive review, of course, but I just stumbled across the New York Times's review (you might need an NYT login to see it), and it's making me really curious to actually see the series in question. The Times reviewer doesn't like Race: The Power of an Illusion much, and the main reason for that dislike (besides the fact that it's a PBS series, which can make for weird production issues) seems to be that the reviewer thinks "race is a social construct" is an old idea, and the series is beating a dead horse and avoiding more interesting issues of race in contemporary society by looking at ancient history.

So. What I'm really wondering about (besides is the series any good) is whether the idea of race as a social construct is really as widespread as the New York Times reviewer seems to think it is. Because maybe it's common knowledge among regular PBS viewers, readers of the late Stephen Jay Gould (who appears in the series), and so forth, but I think there's still plenty of people who think there's valid biological reasons for racial divisions, instead of history and social traditions and suchforth. Now whether the PBS series reaches those people is a different story, but do you really think WKKK (a totally fictional station, I hope) is going to run a series about the evolution of race as an idea and tool of oppression? Allrighty then. Furthermore, if PBS had made a series about the subtle nuances of race in contemporary society based on the idea that race is just a social construct, that assumption would make that series kinda hard for the "race is biological" people to understand (again, assuming such a series would reach them, which I know is kind of a sketchy assumption).

Anyway, my thought is that the PBS series is potentially useful, if only for introducing people to the idea that racial divisions are socially invented and enforced, but maybe it is as PBS-awful as the Times reviewer says? I don't know. I'm mostly just thinking out loud here, and I'm only posting it publically because maybe someone will read it and be able to answer my questions (is the series any good? how widely known and accepted is the idea that race is more a social construct than a biological division between groups of people?)

Ok, so earlier today omega697 wrote somewhat sarcastically in his LiveJournal that he was going to wish for war, in the hopes that it would cause the people of the U.S. to "awaken" politically and in particular get out and vote. The entry is here, and it's clearly a reaction to the I wish for peace meme that started making the LiveJournal rounds yesterday. (The "add 'I wish for peace' to your LJ user interests" meme hasn't spread quite as quickly, but I digress.) He has since disallowed comments on the entry in question, but since I spent a long time this morning thinking about it in my (paper) journal, and later trying to edit the resultant five pages of not entirely related ramble into a well thought-out piece that fit in LJ's comment character limit, I'm going to post what I came up with here.

Ok, wow, that was huge (so huge, I learned to use cut tags on it!) But I did manage to make it considerably more coherent than this morning's paper journal entries, which is good. Looking at it now, I'm definitely glad I gave this piece its own entry, instead of trying to shoehorn it into omega697's journal. Thanks for a thought-provoking post, Kurt!